IB

Student exchange project „United Colors of Young European Businessman” in Tallinn

03.01.2023

Imagine that you live on a Caribbean Island, let us say for instance St. Maarten, or 4862 km to the east on another island, Madeira. For most of your life, you have been enjoying warm temperatures and sunshine. Well, it is also true that a hurricane from time to time might change the routine. And one day you get onto a plane with some of your classmates and a couple of teachers, and you end up at the coordinates 59.4370° N, 24.7536° E (Tallinn).

Participants came from the following countries; Portugal, Turkey, Great Britain, Spain, St. Maarten, and North Macedonia. From the 5th to the 9th of December, we hosted the second student exchange of the ERASMUS+ project „United Colors of Young European Businessman”. The first exchange was in London, last spring.

Teacher Heli Illipe-Sootak had everything very well planned, including the weather. Presentations from each country. Ice-breaking activities organised by Aurelia, Divia, Eva and Nathali from Audentes International School. Tour to the Old Town of Tallinn. Workshops at Mektory and the university of Tallinn. Visits to start-up companies, museums and even a short excursion to Pääsküla bog. Planning is not everything, then you must adapt to the ongoing reality. Fortunately, Heli has a lot of experienced and managed to take the whole group through the programme.

I guess some of you might doubt the convenience of taking our visitors to a bog in winter. They were fascinated. Some of them literally took videos and pictures every ten meters. The temperature and amount of snow were simply perfect for that day. And for Friday, the last day, the last group picture, was sunny. That is why I include the weather in Heli’s planning.

To mention something with a little more detail. The workshop at the University of Tallinn was about social entrepreneurship. To begin, Professor David Parks gave a short but very meaningful introduction to social entrepreneurship. Then one of the university students presented the „social business model canvas”. The workshop itself consisted of building five international teams, each of which was guided by one university student, to work on their own social business ideas. At the end of the day, each group presented its social business model canvas. Thanks to the efforts of the university students there was a fantastic working environment, everyone was actively participating. Problem-Solution-Social Business Model Canvas- Social-Impact had to be considered by the jury to choose the best presentation.

From our school Aaryan, Andrei, Audrey, Evelina and Ilia participated in the programme. During the week a few times they had to take the lead and responsibility of their group. All the participants, teachers and students, were very grateful to them. It was a very enjoyable and enriching experience, not only in terms of entrepreneurship but also in terms of cross-cultural collaboration.